


Royal

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Vagrant Story
Genre: Community: kinkfest, Dragons, F/M, Wyverns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-08
Updated: 2016-05-08
Packaged: 2018-06-07 06:28:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6790117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Well, he <i>is</i> a dragon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Royal

**Author's Note:**

> Written for kinkfest. Prompt: _November 6 - Vagrant Story - Arch Dragon/Wyvern Queen - wyrmfire - "Ashley believed he'd have that wine now"_
> 
> Also, in honor of finally signing up for Flight Rising, Coyo has declared a Dragon Week! It's archived (and hopefully new) dragonfic from here on out. \o/

The human had smelled most wonderfully of the Dark, hadn't been the least bit fooled by the length of his fangs or the sharpness of his claws, and instead of running had indulged him in polite conversation, listened to stories of his prowess from the days when his kind had not been half so rare. Many generations of men had grown old and died since then, and he'd neither seen nor smelled another Arch Dragon since. He might have been the last. And yet the Dark's prophet had known just where to find him.

 _Why do you come?_ he'd asked once politeness was satisfied, night falling behind the toppled walls of the ruined keep he'd made his home.

"My city needs protectors," the prophet had said with a shrug, smiling as if he knew the hunger the silvery chime of his arms had awakened. "There's to be an Ascension, and I would keep the unworthy out."

_And so you'll have me on the walls or in the skies, a pretty figurehead for your cause._

"Oh, no," Losstarot had purred. "I'll have you in the Great Cathedral, and you may _eat_ any who come along."

And so he'd come, chasing that silvery laughter, like as not, but he was a dragon. He hoarded pretty things, and he could taste the brassy arrogance of royal blood: a duke's son at the least. But while he could scent other dragons on the wind, there were none like him. Dragons of flame, of snow, dragons pulled from the Dark itself...but he was alone.

The Cathedral was beautiful and filled with forgotten treasures, but he brooded over his lot in despair. The last, the only. He had, perhaps, lived too long.

 _Guard the Cathedral,_ he'd been asked, but there was little enough to guard it from. The few knights that came were men of the church, raised on tales of saints and dragons, and one he held down lightly under a gleaming golden paw while he explained, slowly, that the tales were wrong. Saint Iocus could never have bested a Greater Wyrm with prayer alone, oh, never. But their precious saint might have caught her napping and locked her in dreams, the better to slay her with cowardly spells. Ah, and how fortunate that he, wisest of all dragons, was quite, quite immune to Sleep.

It took patience to extract a knight from the tough skin of his armor. He mentioned that to Losstarot and gained another peal of that sparkling laughter as a reward, and the admission that human gourmets said the same of shellfish. _We should dine together, you and I,_ he invited, hungry for company.

Sydney's smile made him wish the prophet had been born a dragon himself, though by the smell of him, Sydney would have been as Dark as that fellow lurking somewhere west of here, deep underground.

When night fell and the city's other defenders were free to roam, he left the Cathedral sometimes and went in search of the others. The Earth dragon in the nearby forest rarely had much to say, and the minor green that haunted the sanctum by the city walls was too overawed to be much of a conversationalist. The Thunder dragon he found in the town's abandoned mine flew at him in a rage until she got a good look at the color of his scales, but though she backed down quickly, it was clear to see she was distracted.

 _Can't you smell it? It's all around,_ she growled more to herself than to him, dragging a curious claw through the rock and sighing with pleasure at the bright vein revealed. _Lightning's beautiful too,_ she confided as he moved politely away from her find, _but you can't exactly keep it. And this is so soft!_

Disappointing, on the whole. Clever as they were in the general way, not one of the others had an intellect as quick or as deep as his own. Wondering not for the first time where Losstarot slept his nights away, he asked himself whether the city truly needed defending, whether Sydney would object too strenuously to being carried off and hoarded, perhaps in a nicer keep, with servants and books and the like. The Dark, he thought glumly, would almost certainly object to liberties being taken with its prophet...but that did remind him of his manners, at least.

Though he'd called on all the others, he'd neglected his Dark cousin until now, not because he feared to come out the worst in a battle of magic or mind, but because his cousin's sort were all so very strange. Sometimes they were most willing to talk with one, but sometimes their eyes would go fey and distant, as if listening to some other voice much more interesting than that of their guests.

It was a long trek down through chambers and tunnels, past monsters that gibbered and shrieked at him and ran from his presence, and a few that didn't run quite quickly enough. Once or twice there were traps, but he barely felt them against his armored hide, was still burnished as bright as ever as he came across his first true surprise.

He could smell the wyvern crouched in his path now that he was practically on top of it, though its scent had been lost in that of his Dark cousin before. This one was larger than the puny creatures he'd come across elsewhere in the circle of the Dark city's power, more gold than green, intelligence and determination shining back at him from eyes that didn't duck away from his stare.

 _You are a knight,_ he mused after a long moment, half-spreading and settling his cramped wings now that there was space to do so.

The wyvern nodded once but didn't speak, still hunched as if poised to attack. That surprised him enough to drop him back on his haunches, considering the creature with interest. Wyverns might be lesser wyrms, true, but even a nestling would recognize one such as him instinctively, would know at a glance what a foolish thing a challenge would be. Yet this one was watching him with unmistakable intensity, a breath away from flying at his throat.

 _Most extraordinary,_ he murmured, intending to be heard, _unless, of course, you are guarding a queen._

A long hesitation ensued, but at last he received another nod, more wary than the first.

_Ah. Fear not, my friend. I swear by my fires I mean no harm to her. Have you met the other dragon living below?_

_Which?_ the wyvern asked in a soft, diffuse hiss. _The Dark or the dead?_

Impossibility heaped upon impossibility. _There's a Cold Dragon here?_

 _Deeper,_ the knight replied. _Here long and long, I think. It reeks of him._

Yes, he rather imagined it did. Oh, and now he had to see. _I would pass and visit my kin. Am I to fight you, or shall we come to an accord?_

It was unthinkable that anything scaled should doubt him once he'd sworn by his fires, but it pleased him to see the wyvern consider him carefully before stepping aside. Lesser creatures they might be, but a wyvern understood loyalty, at least with respect to a queen.

Down into darker corridors he went, passing strange contraptions of wood and metal he fancied the humans must use on each other for lack of claws or teeth. An iron golem turned a slow circle to watch him as he slipped through the hall it guarded, but it wasn't interested in dragons, only men. The taste of darkness was growing thicker in the air, dry scales and the oily, brimstone reek of hellfire, but he could also just detect the faint tang of something fresher, sweeter, and he hurried his pace unthinkingly to meet it.

She was a brooding, glittering red in the gloom, her slick scales gleaming with health and strength, and she rose unhurriedly to greet him as he eeled his way into the cavernous room she'd made her den. Golden eyes looked him over with an arrogance he found enchanting, so very unexpected for a being less than half his size, with perhaps a quarter of his magic. He could have ripped her to pieces if not for his oath, but she regarded him with the haughtiness of a queen as she settled to her haunches, her winged forearms half-curled with the daintiness of a cat so that he could just see the spectacular colors of her flight membranes, deep red and blood-black.

 _Greetings,_ she murmured, still eyeing him squarely, her tail curling neatly around her feet. _I heard tales of a great dragon in the city above. Have you come to visit your kin?_

Though one shriek from her could bring her entire brood slithering through the doors to throw themselves upon him, she spoke with a mild courtesy that contained no hint of obsequiousness or fear. Settling himself in much the same posture--feet and forehands planted, tail coiled, his own wings flared only a little because he was far too much of a gentleman to boast--he smiled with half-lidded eyes and politely didn't lick the air, not wanting to seem indecently curious.

 _I have indeed come to pay my respects,_ he said, _though I didn't expect to come across such a treasure on the way._

She arched her neck at him, coquettish, but said, _What a perilous thing, to be called "treasure" by a dragon._

 _Ah? But treasure is to be admired,_ he replied, _for its beauty and its strength. Cherished, for it enriches the beholder._

 _But it often,_ she purred, _passes quickly into the hands of those who would take._

 _Well,_ he said with a wide, toothed grin, _I_ am _a dragon._

Like any mating of their kinds, once the pleasantries were dispensed with, they exploded into violence, she snapping and snarling, bathing him in the warm, inviting lick of her flames, while he did his best to cover and pin her. While he'd expected an easy victory, he quickly found she was agile as a snake, writhing free of him time and again and leaving narrow, stinging gashes behind where her claws stroked his scales. It fired his blood, blinded him to everything but the need to have her, and the next time he caught her, he took her throat in his jaws, biting down ever so lightly until she squirmed.

 _You're so tiny,_ he crooned, lapping at the thin, yielding plating framed by his teeth, the delicate scales. _Will it hurt you?_

 _Try me,_ she hissed, lambent eyes bright with challenge, and he simply couldn't resist.

***

Closing the door very softly, Ashley blinked a few times and rubbed thoughtfully at his nose, not quite certain what he'd seen and entirely certain that he'd rather not know. Leá Monde had already shown him things that were going to stay with him an eternity, but even he had his limits. The only problem was that there was only one way to travel deeper into this maze of old dungeons, and it was directly past... _that._

He wasn't going back in there, damn it. Not until either the dragon or the wyvern left. But in the meantime he was just going to go back a room or two where it was quieter and pretend he hadn't seen anything at all.

And he hoped Merlose would forgive him, but he believed he'd be having some of that wine he'd been carting around for her after all.


End file.
